Friday, January 30, 2009

A group of people took produce labeled as WEST BANK as country of origin from a TESCO store in Swanseas City Centre. The two filled their trollies with dates, fresh herbs, fruit and salads. The trollies, full of produce were up-turned at the supermarket entrance and covered in fake blood to represent the lives lost in Gaza. Reported by undercurrents for http://www.visionon.tv

Thursday, January 29, 2009

We believe your videos should look as good as possible when we broadcast them. Much video on the web is poorly encoded, of low quality, contains unnecessary artefacts (those blocky lines which happen on movement) and other problems.

All this is avoided by following this simple guide!

1. The VOTV transcoding standard

Full spec DV video takes around 200mb space per minute of film, which is clearly impractical for uploading to the web. All finished films therefore need “downsizing” to make them internet-ready. This process is called transcoding. Most streaming sites such as youtube will do this for you, but at a low image quality. We are currently promoting a standard for internet video which uses around 10mb of space per minute of uploaded video. This is not so huge that it will put off viewers from downloading it, but is good enough quality to be screened via a video projector. We will revise this standard upwards when internet bandwidth and codecs improve. We transcode to mp4 format with the h264 codec (rather than other codecs such as div-x or x-vid). The h264 codec is becoming industry-standard.

2. Currently if you are using Abode don't use this to transcode

Video editing software usually has its own encoding options.We recommend using a professional editing package such as Adobe Premiere, but currently we find the transcoding options with Premiere unreliable. We therefore advise exporting from Premiere a normal full spec DV avi as your completed film. You can also keep this top-quality copy or record it to tape for archiving.

3. Use a free stand-alone transcoder

There are a number of free stand-alone transcoders. We ae recommending the simplest one to use. So, download Mpeg Streamclip for free at http://www.squared5.com/ and install.

The police were abusing the law for searching everyone entering the climate camp which led to this happening - protesters ignore police stop and search the police then used sec 44 of the Terrorism Act which would have made this filming of the police stopping legal observes much harder to do. This second film caused the Kent police to be investigated by internal affairs after the Chief Constable lied to an MEP about the policing of legal observers and then the MEP was able to take this film a few hours later to show that he had lied - good bit of video activism to stop police abuse of authority.

The Terrorism Act has been used at many big demonstrations over the last few years and is used more and more on peaceful protesters.Take some action on the new Counter-Terrorism Act which comes on on 16th February http://www.pledgebank.com/s76photo before it becomes illegal to use video as a tool to stop the common police abuse of their authority."I willtake a photograph of a UK police officer, or other defined under S76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, on or before February 16 2009

76 Offences relating to information about members of armed forces etc(1) After section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (collection of information) insert—“58A Eliciting, publishing or communicating information about membersof armed forces etc(1) A person commits an offence who—(a) elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual whois or has been—(i) a member of Her Majesty’s forces,(ii) a member of any of the intelligence services, or(iii) a constable,which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing orpreparing an act of terrorism, or(b) publishes or communicates any such information.(2) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this sectionto prove that they had a reasonable excuse for their action.(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable—(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term notexceeding 10 years or to a fine, or to both;(b) on summary conviction—(i) in England and Wales or Scotland, to imprisonment fora term not exceeding 12 months or to a fine notexceeding the statutory maximum, or to both;(ii) in Northern Ireland, to imprisonment for a term notexceeding 6 months or to a fine not exceeding thestatutory maximum, or to both.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The World Economic Forum got under way today in Davos, Switzerland. The theme this year is, fittingly, the global economic crisis. "The level of global wealth has changed," said Kofi Annan, who served as Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 through 2006, in an opening panel. "The question is, are we capable of changing or adapting [the global economy] fast enough to save our planet? That is the challenge."

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

A group of people took produce labeled as WEST BANK as country of origin from a TESCO store in Swanseas City Centre. The two filled their trollies with dates, fresh herbs, fruit and salads. The trollies, full of produce were up-turned at the supermarket entrance and covered in fake blood to represent the lives lost in Gaza. Reported by undercurrents for http://www.visionon.tv

With over 3.8 million simultaneous streams of the inauguration (just on Akamai) with very little paying advertising how much is streamlining video costing the broadcasters and will they last out the recession with much reduced ad spend.

NewTeeVee suggests that Web video viewing figures were in the order of 70 million views. This compares to traditional television viewing figures in the U.S. of around the 40 million mark.

Digital information just wonts to be free, and the is still a lot that dosent add up in the dot-com world.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

The prolific and controversial web culture of piracy, particularly file sharing, has taken the world by storm, and for more than a decade, we've been waging a war in the name of the 20th Century's model of copyright law. The content industry has convinced the world that extremism in copyright regulation is good for business and economic growth.

In this lecture Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig argues that this view is false and discusses the potential creative accomplishments that our society could achieve, if only we viewed copyright and intellectual property (IP) laws differently. Lessig "spotlights the newest and possibly the most harmful culture war - a war waged against our kids and others who create and consume art. America's copyright laws have ceased to perform their original beneficial role: protecting artists' creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works. In fact, our system now criminalizes those very actions. For many, new technologies have made it irresistible to flout these unreasonable and ultimately untenable laws. Lessig shows how we can and must end this conflict. By embracing "read-write culture", which allows its users to create art as readily as they consume it, we can ensure that creators get the support - artistic, commercial, and ethical - they deserve and need."

Saturday, January 03, 2009

interview with me about Genoa 2001 by the French video actavist group socialautopsy.

One of the key evidences in the Diaz School trial against the Italian police was a video by Hamish Campbell, from the British video collective Undercurrents. On the last day of the anti G8 in Genoa2001, he filmed the violent police raid. In this interview, Hamish talks about videoactivism, his experience in Genoa and all the good reasons to keep the camera rolling.